MSI wants to mix up the market of fast flash storage devices. The Taiwanese electronics company is planning a total of eight new SSD series with its Spatium M400, M300 and S200. Since the hardware experts plan to install fourth-generation PCIe in their new SSDs, the plans sound promising.
MSI enters the SSD market
When MSI announced at CES 2021 that in-house SSDs were now coming, industry experts and fans alike perked up. This is hardly surprising to anyone in light of the first leaked specs. After all, the SSDs should be capable of high performance due to PCIe Gen4. We can now probably also assign names to the SSDs, which have been anonymous for the most part so far. After all, a database entry with the corresponding names has now been made public. Thanks to the blazing fast interface and built-in heat sinks, the MSI SSDs in the M.2 form factor should be able to reach speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s (read) and 6,900 MB/s (write). Apart from PCIe Gen4, we do not yet know any details about the installed hardware. In view of the high write speeds, it seems that the Phison E18 will be used as the controller. MSI will surely publish details about this in the near future.
Eight series of different SSDs
MSI seems to be quite sure of its case. After all, the company has secured no less than eight different product names from the so-called Eurasian Economic Commission (ECC). In particular, the Taiwanese registered the names “Spatium M470”, “Spatium M471” and “Spatium M480”. The number “4” most likely indicates PCIe Gen4. On the other hand, “Spatium M370”, “Spatium M371”, “Spatium M380” and “Spatium M381” are likely to be equipped with PCIe Gen3. Besides these SSDs in the modern M.2 form factor, SSDs in the classic 2.5-inch format are also planned. In this regard, MSI secured the “S280 series”.
Of course, this name registration is not yet a guarantee for the release of the SSDs. Should eight SSD series really come from MSI, the names are not yet set in stone either. At least the company still leaves the name extension “Spatium” open. After all, MSI registered the names both with and without “Spatium”. However, we can be sure that a release is imminent for one series in the meantime. Thus, the MSI Spatium M370 is already offered as PCIe Gen3 x4 in a PC system from the company CyberPowerPC. Transfer rates of 2,400 MB/s (read) and 1,800 MB/s (write) are mentioned.
